This isn'r the latest copy. I have made some slight changes and one was making the extra petal smaller. I wanted to show a falling leaf and tie in the type with the image because to me they lacked a bit...

It would be great to use the Fibonnaci sequence but I can never find a simple article to explain how to apply for designing. I start to hear the math info and my eyes glaze over. I have a template for...

Question regarding graphic design tablet sizes

I'm planning on purchasing a Intuos tablet for Christmas for a 23-inch Samsung SyncMaster 2333 for Photoshop and Illustrator. I noticed there are different sizes of Intuos tablets:

-Small
-Medium
-Large
-Extra Large

What I'm confused about is, what were to happen if I get a tablet that is too small? Does it just mean the tablet is extra sensitive to what happens on-screen? If so, couldn't I just compensate for a small tablet's size my zooming in with Photoshop?

What size should I be using? The current Intuos 4 tablets seem very expensive in large and extra large sizes, so I want to try going as small as I can.

Comment

Yes. matching your aspect ratio is more important in my opinion, this allows you to make the most use of the surface area of the tablet.

In the tablet driver there are two main mapping modes -- how the tablet surface is mapped to the screen surface. Proportional and non-proportional. Non-proportional will give you the entire tablet surface to work with as a 'live' area. BUT, you try and draw a simple square and you're out of luck as it distorts if your monitor is anything different than the tablets area proportion.

Proportional gives you square-squares but again, if your monitor setup is different in ratio (as in a dual monitor approach), expect to lose a good portion of your lower part of the tablet.

Myself, I prefer proportional. And since I have a dual mon setup, it means I lose the bottom third of the tablet. Which is why I use a 12 inch tablet.

Comment

Broacher, I also prefer proportional because it reacts the way a normal pen/pencil/paintbrush would. This is why I mentioned aspect ratio, because when the aspect ratio of the tablet matches your screen, you have no dead space on your tablet.

Design is not decoration.

Comment

I remember long, long ago... using a third-party tablet driver/app that was very customizable for the user and one of the things that intrigued me with this app was the ability to design customized tablet templates to assign functions and launches etc. to designated areas of the tablet. In particular, it allowed you to reclaim 'dead' tablet space for such functions. And it would print this out, you slip it under the plastic cover, and there you go.